Network printing systems can now handle a variety of types and number of simultaneous print jobs. Because a printer can only process one print job at a time, each printer uses a print queue to hold other print jobs while printing a current print job. For example, a printer may comprise a memory that it uses as a print queue. Typically, network printing systems employ one or more print servers to feed the print jobs to the printers.
In addition to providing temporary storage, printer queues also provide job flow control and automated assignment of job processing instructions and job attributes. Examples of flow are controls on the ability to accept additional jobs into the queue and controls on the release of jobs already in the queue. Examples of automatic assignment of job processing instructions include assignment of default values for unspecified instructions and overriding existing values. Examples of job attributes include job name, job sender name, and processing priority. The number of job processing instructions and job attributes can be large.
Unfortunately, it can be difficult to manage multiple print queues, especially when the printers of the printing system are based on different platforms, software, and/or hardware. For example, the queue settings between different print queues may vary greatly in regard to duplex printing, color printing, print quality settings, and the like.
Printing systems and management software are well known in the art. The known systems and software often includes features for centrally establishing and managing print queues for printers of a network printing system. Cloning of printers is one technique that can establish identical printer queues on multiple devices, but cloning does nothing to ensure continued equivalence of printer queues.
Unfortunately, the known systems and software have difficulty synchronizing print queues effectively. This is because it is not uncommon for network printing systems to have to support multiple operating systems, different hardware platforms, different print drivers, etc. Many of the printers in a network printing system will produce different outputs for the same print job. Therefore, conventional network printing systems are often incapable of ensuring that a pool of printers will output print jobs identically across different printers.
For example, if a print job on one printer fails, then many network printing systems will attempt to redirect that print job (and the other print jobs for that printer) to another printer. However, because of the differences between printers, the redirected print job will likely not result in the same output if it were processed by the original printer. As another example, a print job may be quite large and the network printing system may spread the print job across multiple printers. Ideally, the output from each of these printers would be identical. Therefore, it may be desirable for a network printing system to ensure that print jobs are output identically across different printers.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to manage multiple print queues of a network printing system. It may also be desirable to synchronize multiple queues. These queues may be implemented in a single printing device or across multiple printing devices so that print jobs can be output identically in a network printing system.